We work night after night, silent silhouettes sweating in the dark. The hours grind by & I make time pass by imagining I’m an Egyptian slave constructing one of the lesser pyramids. My reverie broken when I mistakenly articulate it to Eddie by saying when we drop a crate for the third time Come on Eddie, for the love of Ra!
Tonight when I came home Astrid was on the floor.
– Are you OK? What happened?
– I fell down the stairs.
First compassionate thought was for the baby- his head will be dented & all squashed in at one side I thought.
I took her to bed & fed her & read to her like my mother read to me tho she was by all appearances unharmed by the fall. She lay in bed staring with only the whites of her eyes. Her pupils lay there like little broken pieces of night. She told me not to fuss. Do you think the baby’s all right? I asked. Should we take your stomach to the hospital?
– You don’t want this baby, she said not looking at me.
– That’s not true! I shouted defensively. I didn’t want this baby but now that it’s coming I’ve accepted the inevitable I lied hoping to talk myself into stoic fortitude. It didn’t work.
Tonight
Something happened tonight. Laboring away as usual, a useless moon shedding diffused light through a thin veil of clouds, the night like a bite of cold apple- it made my teeth sting. Tied the boat to the pier & thought how if someone bottled smell of wet rope & sold it over the counter I’d buy it.
Sudden shouting. Above us a group of four Arabs descended the steps walking closely together- a tough-guy walk, a mean bounce. Long black coats & longer faces. The Arabs shouted something & our guys shouted back & stopped working & grabbed whatever was handy, pipes crowbars metal hooks. The two groups argued in a spattering of French & Arabic. I didn’t know what they were arguing about but tension chewable. The two groups menacingly close to one another & there was a little show of pushing & shoving & they looked so much like rival football supporters full of beer the whole scene made me homesick.
Eddie said to me We should keep out of it. What do you think?
Didn’t tell him what I thought because what I thought was this: Everyone here but Eddie & me has a beard.
Couldn’t pick up the meaning of all those guttural sounds- only the hostility was clear. After the group broke up & climbed back up the sloping ramp the leader of the Arab group spat on the ground, a gesture that always says to me I’m too scared to spit in your face so I’m just going to put some phlegm about half a meter from your left shoe OK?
Dawn
Am I changing? Is a man’s character changeable? Imagine an immortal. Revolting to think he might be making the same old booboos over the centuries. To think of the immortal on his 700,552nd birthday still touching the plate even when someone has told him it’s hot- surely we have deep capacity for change but our 80 years doesn’t give us ample opportunity. You have to be a fast learner. You have to cram infinity into a handful of lousy decades.
This morning passed horribly deformed beggar who was for all practical purposes merely a torso rattling a cup- was it really me who gave him 100 francs & said Take the day off? It wasn’t me, not exactly. It was one of my selves, one of the multitudes. Some of them laugh at me. Others bite their nails in suspense. One snorts with derision. That’s how they are, the multitudes. Some of the selves are children & some are parents. That’s why every man is his own father & his own son. With the years if you learn enough you can learn how to shed your selves like dead skin cells. Sometimes they come out of you & walk around.
Yes I’m changing. Change is when new selves come into foreground while others recede into forgotten landscapes. Maybe definition of having lived full life is when every citizen in the hall of selves gets to take you for a spin- the commander the lover the coward the misanthrope the fighter the priest the moral guardian the immoral guardian the lover of life the hater of life the fool the judge the jury the executioner- when every last soul is satisfied at moment of death. If only one of the selves has been nothing but a spectator or a tourist then the life is incomplete.
My commander, that highest voice in the hierarchy of my head, is back- tyrannical bastard. He orders me to stay w/ Astrid & ride it out. No wonder am in confusion. Am oppressed by totalitarian police state in which I live. There must be a revolution one of these days. A revolt of all my selves- but I’m not sure I have the one needed to lead them: a liberator.
Escape!
Baby escaped! Fluid has become flesh. No turning back now. We’ve named it Jasper.
A cause for celebration & fear & trembling. Astrid proud mother- me semiproud. Never been much of a collaborator. Baby was joint project & my personal stamp hard to ascertain.
Today baby on a blanket kicking chubby legs in the air. Told Astrid to keep him off the floor- would be embarrassing if he was eaten by rats. Bent over baby & looked but really wanted to peer into his skull to see if any evil or cruelty or intolerance or sadism or immorality in there. A new human being. Am not impressed it’s mine.
Can’t help thinking that in this baby we’ve forged an absurd monument to our passionless relationship- we’ve created a symbol of something not worth symbolizing: a crazy edifice of flesh that will grow in equal proportion to our dwindling love as it dies.
The smell! The smell!
There’s more feces here than in the Marquis de Sade’s prison cell.
Silence
Baby doesn’t cry. I don’t know anything about babies except that they cry. Ours isn’t crying.
– Why is he so damn quiet? I asked.
– I don’t know.
Astrid sat in the living room all pale staring out the window. Can’t help but look at this baby & see not a child or a new human being but an old one. A sickening idea has taken hold-this baby is me prematurely reincarnated. I loathe this kid- I loathe it because it is me. It is me. It will surpass me. It will overthrow me. It will know what I know, all my mistakes. Other people have children. Not me. I have given birth to something monstrous: to myself.
– I think he’s hungry, I said.
– So?
– So get your tit out.
– He’s sucking me dry.
– OK, OK. Maybe I’ll just give him some normal milk.
– No! That’s no good for him!
– Well, fuck, this is not my field of expertise. All I know is the baby needs some kind of nourishment.
– Why don’t you read to him? she said laughing. Last night she’d caught me reading him passages from Heidegger.
– He doesn’t understand, she’d howled.
– I don’t either! I shouted back. Nobody does!
A very bad situation. Of the three of us, it’s clear whose welfare must be provided for at all costs, who is the most important here.
Me.
I Almost Died Tonight!!!!!!!
The boat’s never on time so we wait & read the newspaper & then it arrives like the four horsemen of the apocalypse on a moonlight cruise. The darkness broken by bobbing lights of the boat heading toward us & as it moors the rigid faces of our employers wedged tightly in the dark.
Tonight Eddie & I were lifting a particularly heavy crate that just wouldn’t budge & I’d only got it a quarter of an inch off the ground when I realized in a panic I wasn’t bending my knees. Fearing for longevity of my spine I lowered the crate & stepped away from it & tho it was too late I bent my knees.
– What are you doing? Eddie asked.
– Let’s have a break, I said & pulled out a book from my back pocket & started to read- a novel I’d bought at one of the stalls next to the Seine: Journey to the End of the Night by Céline.
Didn’t read more than a line- my eye caught dark mass moving toward us, a group of men you’d think were out for a brisk walk if not for guns in their hands.